A significant war crimes case at the Hague against Goran Hadzic has last week Thursday 3 July reached its defence stage.

In 1992, Goran Hadzic was elected President of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK), a territory seized from Croatia by Serbs in rebellion against Croatia’s declaration of independence from communist Yugoslavia. According to the ICTY indictment Hadzic was involved in the forcible removal and murder of thousands of Croatian civilians and other non-Serbs between 1991 and 1993. Hadzic is accused of 14 crimes against humanity and violations of laws or customs of war. His indictment specifically names the 1991 massacre of 250 Croatian and non-Serb civilians from the Vukovar hospital in one of the first atrocities of the war.

Regarding detention and deportation (ethnic cleansing) the ICTY Prosecution considers Hadzic responsible for the detention of prisoners in the JNA military (Yugoslav People’s Army) prison in Sid, Serbia, police building and hangar in Dalj and the “Velepromet” warehouse in the vicinity of Vukovar, Croatia.

Under counts ten and eleven, Hadzic is charged with having supported the planning, preparation and execution of deportations or forcible relocation of Croat and other non-Serb civilians on the territory of RSK. “In order to achieve their goal, the Serb forces would surround Croat towns and villages and asked the non-Serb residents to hand over their weapons. After that, they would attack the towns and villages, even if the local residents had fulfilled their requests. The aim of the attack was to force the local population to flee. After having taken control over the territories, the Serb forces gathered Croat and non-Serb civilians and forcibly relocated them to the locations controlled by Croatian government bodies or deported them outside of Croatia,” the Hague Prosecution alleges.

At the start of the defence opening statement last Thursday, Goran Hadzic’s attorney Zoran Zivanovic stated that Hadzic is not responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Croatia from June 1991 to the end of 1993, either as an individual or as a superior. Zivanovic called on the judges to acquit the former prime minister of the Serb Autonomous Region Eastern Slavonia and the former president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina of the charges, which include the joint criminal enterprise aimed at a permanent elimination of non-Serbs from large parts of Croatia.

Zivanovic stated that in the course of its case the prosecution tried to paint Hadzic as a ‘violent man with sinister plans’. He said that Hadzic was just an ordinary family man, a former warehouse employee who wasn’t in a position to influence the events that launched him to a political function and ‘changed his life forever’.

In the final part of the opening statement, the judges watched the first part of a documentary made by George Bogdanovich, Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War. In the documentary, Slovenia, Croatia and the ‘German bid to recolonize the Balkans’ are blamed for the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The documentary depicts Serbia as a victim.

My goodness, to Hadzic’s defence sees even Croatia and Slovenia are to blame because they wanted freedom and democracy from communist Yugoslavia oppression! Serbia according to this garbage is the victim because it brutally attacked Croatia for wanting freedom!

Then Monday 7 July Hadzic himself took the stand as first witness for his defence. Hadzic told his war crimes trial at the Hague Tribunal that serious clashes between the Croatian authorities and local Serbs erupted when the flag of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was removed from buildings in Serb-majority areas of the country in 1991 and replaced with the Croatian flag.

Well, what did this ordinary family man think would happen after 94% of his countrymen (Croatian citizen voters) voted to secede from communist Yugoslavia and proclaimed Croatia’s independence and sovereignty!?

He certainly was no ordinary family man in 1991 just as he is not that now. It’s to be remembered that it was thousands of such Serb “ordinary family men” living in Croatia who rose against Croatia’s independence, starting with terrorising their Croat and other non-Serb neighbours, beating them, knifing them, carting their men off to concentration camps in Serbia, banishing them from their homes, blocking the roads with heavy logs so that no traffic could enter into that part of Croatia they set their minds to carve off from Croatia’s sovereign territory and establish as an “ethnically clean” Serb territory.

Hadzic stressed that he advocated the continued existence of the federal state (Yugoslavia), as did some Western politicians. Yeah, but the Western advocates didn’t go about ethnically cleansing and murdering non-Serb population, although their atrocious behaviour did give the Serbs room to move and feed the arms embargo against Croatia. At the end of his statement, Hadzic asked a rhetorical question: ‘If it were true that I ordered and organized expulsions and murders of civilians and the destruction of Croatian towns and villages, if my conscience were not clear, how could my wife and daughter still live in Croatia today, as they do?’

Oh my Lord – this man is not only an indicted war criminal but also he even today presents as disturbingly malicious, twisted liar and a perverted individual who in the instance tries to suggest that if he had committed the crimes his wife and daughter couldn’t live in Croatia because Croats would kill them.

All in all, he certainly gives no indication of being an “ordinary family man” as his ICTY defence paints him. A faithful puppet of Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic regime, Hadzic was a local leader of the campaign to expel Croats from a third of Croatia and annex the territory to a “Greater Serbia” also including half of Bosnia. The campaign ended in disaster, although today’s leader of the Serbian half of Bosnia, Milorad Dodik, regularly threatens (the last public instance was late June of this year at the unveiling of monument to Gavrilo Princip whose assassination in 1914 of heir to Austro-Hungarian throne was soon follwed by the outbreak of WWI) to break away and destroy the country 19 years after the war ended. Helped by the then Serbian government, Hadzic went into hiding when indicted by the international tribunal in 2004. Detectives from The Hague tracked him to his house in Novi Sad, north of Belgrade, but the authorities failed to seize him. He was finally arrested on 20 July 2011 in the hills of northern Serbia where he was rumoured to enjoy the shelter of an Orthodox monastery.

While we wait for this case and due process to end, and we will wait for some time, if by any insane fluke Hadzic is considered an “ordinary family man” then it must be said he came from hell defined by Greater Serbia political and genocidal spheres; not a place where ordinary family men we know of come from. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Comments

There may be similarities, Alija, between the two but I for one know there are huge differences between the two at direct acts even if you might have the urge to argue with me you won’t win, my mind is made up on evidence, as to ICTY – it’s a mixed bag, that’s for sure

….even Croatia and Slovenia are to blame because they wanted freedom and democracy from communist Yugoslavia oppression!—– It’s insane how those who wanted to be free are blamed. Sometimes I really wonder what kind of world am I living in!

Yep, dani, the boldness of those criminals is overwhelming. Doesn’t surprise though when it comes to Serbs, they will blame anyone but themselves. Be that as is, I trust justice will prevail regardless of what he says. A total lunatic

Well sure I’m always way off but there must be a reason why you never introduce evidence used vs Croats,and I truly hope you don’t mind telling us a reason for it.The evidence used at Kordic’s trial is more then enough to convict him of war crimes.

Well Alija, he has just returned home from prison, served his time and paid the dues ICTY imposed and has always and still does protest his innocence, so perhaps the future will show. It’s truly not worth replying to you because you, whoever you are, will always twist things. I do not talk about specific evidence in any cases before the ICTY only about matter or some, not all, crimes people are indicted or sentenced for – I have done this for persons of all nationalities I wrote about, this is a blog is simply not the platform to analyse evidence in detail or to list all crimes on indictments because they are usually a long list, that is the matter for the courts. And yes, you are always way off

His wife and daughter live in Croatia because Croats never committed genocide nor did we ever ask Serbs to leave. We never killed Serbian families in war that didn’t take up arms or went against us. However he needs to be put on a …. list should he be freed by the ICTY. I do not care how anyone looks at this. If you had anything to do with the massacre in Vukovar you should not be breathing.He and his family should hope that he is found guilty.

This Alija Derzelez, must be a Bosnian Muslim if one goes by the name, so I am not surprised that he compares Hadzic case and Kordic as similar. But Alija Derzelez is very well aware of the truth that the two cases cannot be fully compared. Hadzic attacked people because they voted for freedom and Kordic was on the side that defended Croat people in Bosnia because at the time Muslims were massacring them right left and center. I believe Kordic never committed any crimes but was sentenced because he was highly positioned and charged with ordering committal of crimes etc. There is a difference in my book between an attack and defense, generally. Defence does mitigate acts but pure aggression does not.

Indeed, Wilkinson, it seems that Hadzic thinks that if he were an “ordinary family man” at the time he joined eagerly the Serb rebels against Croatian independence, that should mitigate his crimes. As far as I see, no “ordinary family man” would get involved so quickly and with such murderous dedication.

There are Muslims living in Croatia too my friend,25000 of them fought in homeland war and I’m just one of them,Ask Fred Matic and he will tell you little about me.You are saying Kordic was defending Cro people so there for he ordered killings of 116 civilians and ethnic cleansing of non Croat population while he was making deals with Serbian bros like Hadzic,Karadzic and Mladic and he did it all while we fought his bros in Croatia.

Can you explain killing a 116 unarmed people in defence,showing up at there homes early in the morning killing them in sleep. All of them happened to be civilians and unarmed and then burning down there properties.DELETED AS OFFENSIVE

…YOU see……. this Goran Hadzic is the descendants of the “VLAHS, JANJICARI & CIGANI” that King Tomislav and the equally intelligent Roman Catholic Church allowed into Croatian lands 1000 years ago! Prior to that, Croatia and Bosnia were over 90% catholic! And another thing, I think it was Pope Pius V that said “Croatia was the bulwark of Christianity”. I think another Pope stated that (in 925 AD), Croatia should NEVER attack any of its neighbours, and if an attack on Croatia happened, the Pope would send his armies to protect the Croats! Oh yeah, through the centuries, as Croatia was attacked, the Pope never sent any SOLDIERS to defend Croatia! Maybe it was a mistake for Western Civilization to adopt the “CHRISTIAN” religion! Too bad that the Roman Emperors didn’t do more to destroy that STUPID cult! The Roman temples on the Dalmatian coast have been there longer than those USELESS catholic churches! We adopted christianity for what?

Faith, Tempus Fugit is a very personal matter and I am certain many would defend Catholic church in Croatia because they are believers and have their rights to worship just as anyone else and those that do not.

Thank you, Barbara. I will never ever forget when in 1995 I collaborated with a TV documentary made in Australia when refugees who were taken to Serb concentrations camps 1991 and later discovered by Red Cross – they spoke much about the horror of their Serb neighbours, friends, “ordinary people” turning into blood-thirsty killers and torturers overnight. So, to my view no ordinary family person would participate in killings, ethnic cleansing, torture – if they do, they posses the characteristics of what makes a war criminal and wait for the chance to practice it, especially if they join as volunteers etc.

Hilarious that Alija mentions evidence when the ICTY suppressed all the exculpatory evidence it could in the Kordic, Blaskic, and Prlic et. al. trials, namely Lt. Col. Dr. Charles Schrader’s clinical, chronological analysis of Muslim aggression in “The Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central Bosnia 1992-1994.”

Yet it took the false testimony of the compulsive liar, war profiteer, hate monger, antifascist fascist antifascist perjurer Stipe Mesic and his fables about “two chains of command” for which there was not a single document to support other than his bar room jokes and odious lies.

Kordic was convicted simply for being HDZ head in Central Bosnia and the Croatian Community’s spokesperson. It was a political indictment, and a Stalnist political show trial from start to finish in which the international community, and the UK, US, France and Netherlands washed their own guilt and blood off of their hands over the back of Kordic and the Croatian community of Central Bosnia.

The fact is that in Ahmici, where there were dug in ABiH troops and Mujahadeen, and where they used the Mosque for sniper nests, a battle took place in April 1993 as Ahmici was the key strategic point in the planned ABiH offensive that HVO intelligence found out about through its wiretaps. It was a spoiler attack.

Meanwhile in Dusina on Jan. 26, 1993, where there were no Croat troops and there was no state of war between Bosniaks and Croats as was the case in April 1993, no battle took place and the civilians were massacred and the village was looted then razed. For this, mysteriously, Col. Stewart didn’t show up with BBC and ITN teams. In fact, no Western media even covered or mentioned the Dusina massacre until almost a decade after the conflict.

If Bosnians are unsatisfied with muddling through, they must cut the Gordian knot of their constitution. One way would be to give the Croats the entity they want. The FBiH would be split into two entities, with a Bosniak and Croat majority respectively.

To avoid “third entity” language toxic for Bosniaks, a federal district around Sarajevo could be added as a fourth entity. The RS could remain as it is, since a large majority of its residents support its continued existence. That option was explored in
the 2008 initiative, and it may return in the future. Croat leaders insist that any new dispensation must include control of their own middle level of government, with executive, legislative and judicial branches. There is nothing inherently wrong with a Croat entity. It would solve many problems: there would be no further need for cantons, and relations between state and entity, and between entity and municipality, could be consistent throughout Bosnia. Instead of a tangled federation of entities and peoples, the country would be a normal federation of territorial units, a design with many successful European examples. Ethnic quotas could be replaced by regional representation and protection of fundamental human rights.

At the beginning, FBiH was a federation not of cantons but of two political communities and the areas they controlled: the “Muslim-Croat Federation”. The federal partners were the rump Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina headquartered in Sarajevo with its army, and the breakaway Croatian Community (later Republic) of Herceg- Bosna, with its military wing, the Croatian Defence Council. Traces of Herceg-Bosna persist, notably in the electricity utility Elektroprivreda HZ H-B, which covers most areas of Croat habitation. Croat leaders cite this to illustrate their vision for selfrule. The utility’s structure, divided into several non-contiguous areas, is in thisview a model for a future Croat-majority political unit. The Croatian postal service is another vestige. The main obstacle to a Croat-majority entity is political: it is highly offensive to Bosniaks. Yet, rationales for their rejection ring hollow. A senior SDA leader ruled out the entity because its leaders allegedly would call a referendum and secede. RS has not done this, and a small, scattered Croat unit would lack capability to break away and face opposition from Zagreb and Brussels. Others have emotional objections to realisation of the wartime “dream” of Herceg-Bosna, an ethnically clean Croat territory achieved by war crimes. Some simply ask the international community to rule a third entity out of bounds. ENDQUOTE

Lol.so then they go label every Croat house and let every Croat know of the attack even tho ABIH was right there and they menage not to kill or capture any Muslim soldiers but they did manage to kill 36 kids among others.Why dont you mention a book written by Joe Tripician after all he was paid by Cro government and diaspora.What a chance for you to shine.

Alija, simple as this: Joe Tripcian and his book was and is a failure as it didn’t make the press as far as Croat gov in concerned. He went all in to believe the lies spread about Tudjman internationally etc – but be that as it may – the ICTY vindicated Tudjman at 2012 Appeal acquittal of Gotovina and Markac and it will do so regarding Herceg-Bosna, just hang tight and bite your nails. Tripician’s book was not paid for by Croatian gov or diaspora, some of his work was, but when it became evident that the author was perhaps leaning to the side of lies spread about Tudjman and gave then credence perhaps, the project went into smoke as far as Tudjman is concerned. Good on Tudjman. Tripician’s book published in 2006 Balkanised at Sunrise is nothing to contribute to any shine for Croats, for him – perhaps it did get him a bit out of his reported personal finanical troubles as he was reported penniless around the time he took the offer to write Tudjman’s biography/ it would seem he would take anything like that at the time and tune his plot to suit the internationally set plot to destroy Tudjman’s reputation on basis of lots of lies. http://joetrip.com/news-archive/80-joe-tripician-in-croatias-globus-magazine

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Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. Here I will bring to you a variety of topics covering the documented truth about that terrible war that Croatia had to endure during the period between 1991 and 1995 and about Croatian political history that shaped a wonderful nation of people.

Croatian people wanted independence for centuries, just as they had it until the twelfth century but fate was not on their side – others wanted their beautiful land. In late 1980′s the will to break free from Yugoslavia which suffocated freedom and self determination through harsh communist party rule finally bore the desired fruit.

In June 1991 Croatia declared its independence; soon after the aggressive war against Croatia broke out. The struggle of the Croatian people for self-determination was a just one. But I fear genuine justice has not been served as there have been, and there still exist, international covert and overt moves to equate victims with aggressors continue in attempts to change history. Truth often becomes obscured and lost and that is why I have chosen to write this blog, to concentrate on actual events and issues about Croatia – wishing it a bright and freedom-loving future.

It certainly was not easy to come out of the war that was fought on two fronts:

1. On the military front the world’s public has seen the indiscriminate bombardment of Croatian cities, towns and villages from land, sea and air; the destruction of civilian targets including homes, schools, hospitals, churches, factories and cultural monuments; the blockading and destruction of roads, bridges and ports; the blockading of power, water, food and medical supplies. What hasn’t been shown on our television sets is the forced clearing and evacuation of towns and villages, followed by looting, torture, rape and murder carried out by the Serbian forces, who were initially backed by the federal Yugoslav army that was largely constituted by Serb nationals; the transportation of multiple hundreds of innocent Croatian civilians from Croatia into concentration camps Serbia (Begejci, Stajicevo, Sremska Mitrovica... from October 1991, and later (1992) transferred into Serb-held camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Omarska, Keratern, Manjaca, Trnopolje).

2. The second front was the war of political propaganda centred on: misinformation about the rights of minorities in Croatia; portrayal of the Croatian people as Ustasha or Fascists; the representation of the Croatian defence forces as illegal paramilitary units; the representation of the Croatian and Slovenian republics as unreasonable secessionists who are unwilling to negotiate; a regurgitation of distorted facts about World War II.

Indeed Croatia had an absolute right to defend itself and this is often forgotten if not often denied it.

Ina Vukic

Ina has been a tireless volunteer on humanitarian aid and fundraising for victims of war in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially war orphans. From1991 to beginning of 1994 she contributed in lobbying for international recognition of Croatian independence and Croatia’s rights in defending its territory and people from military aggression by Serbian forces. For this dedicated voluntary work Ina was awarded two Medals of Honour by the first president of the Republic of Croatia in 1995 (Commemorative Medal of the Homeland War and Order of the Croatian Trefoil).Ina has also written hundreds articles for newspapers in Australia and Croatia on the plight of Croatian people for freedom and self-determination, developing democracy in former communist countries. She holds two graduate and one post-graduate university degrees, specialising in behaviour, clinical and political psychology and management.

Blessed Aloysius Stepinac quote:

“When they take everything from you, you’ll be left with two hands; put them together in prayer and then you’ll be the strongest.” Blessed Aloysius Stepinac (1898 – 1960)

First President of Croatia Dr Franjo Tudjman quote:

“They could not, nor will they ever be able to kill our passion and our need to live in human dignity, in peace with ourselves and with the free nations of Europe. We have carved out that right at our first democratic elections. For this right and for our sacred land we are even ready to die” – Dr Franjo Tudjman (1922-1999) ( Addressing the Croatian nation at the moment of the start of Serbian aggression against Croatia, 16 October 1991)

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